#!/usr/bin/perl -w
if (@ARGV==0) { 
   die "Usage: countseq.pl <dbname>\n";
}
my $prog = "/usr/ncbi/blast2/xdformat -n -i $ARGV[0]";
my $strOutput;
my @output = `$prog`;
foreach my $line (@output) {
   if (/^No. of sequences \(letters\): ([\d,])\s/) {
      $strOutput = $1;
   }
}
die "No output gathered \n" unless defined($strOutput);
print $strOutput;